By Hyunjoo Jin
SEOUL, April 19 (Reuters) – North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday, accelerating its missile launches amid Iran war tensions and talk of possible meetings with the U.S. and South Korea.
Pyongyang’s intense missile activity – this was the fourth such launch this month and the seventh of the year – is meant to display its self-defence capabilities while gaining international leverage, some experts said.
“The missile launches may be a way of showing that – unlike Iran – we have self-defence capabilities,” said South Korean former presidential security adviser Kim Ki-jung.
“The North also appears to be exerting pressure preemptively and make a show of force before engaging in dialogue with the United States and South Korea,” he said.
IRAN WAR, TRUMP VISIT LOOM OVER LAUNCHES
The seven-week-old U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which has as one aim the curbing of Tehran’s nuclear programme, could reinforce Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, experts and former South Korean officials say.
U.S. President Donald Trump, preparing for a summit in China next month, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung have repeatedly expressed interest in holding talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There are no publicly known plans for any meetings.
Lee recently conveyed regret to the North for drone incursions from the South, receiving rare praise from Pyongyang.
Sunday’s missiles were fired from near the city of Sinpo on North Korea’s east coast toward the sea around 6:10 a.m. (2110 GMT on Saturday) and flew about 140 km (90 miles), South Korea’s military said in a statement.
Japan’s government posted on social media that the missiles were believed to have fallen near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and no incursion into Japan’s exclusive economic zone had been confirmed.
South Korea’s presidential Blue House convened an emergency security meeting, calling the launches a provocation that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions, according to media reports. It urged Pyongyang to “stop the provocative acts”.
It was not clear what kind of ballistic missiles were fired, but Sinpo has submarines and equipment for test-firing submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The North last fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in May 2022, and it flew as far as 600 km (370 miles).
North Korea has made “very serious” advances in its ability to turn out nuclear weapons, with the probable addition of a new uranium enrichment facility, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.
In late March, North Korean leader Kim said Pyongyang’s status as a nuclear-armed state was irreversible and expanding a “self-defensive nuclear deterrent” was essential to national security.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin, John Geddie, Nobuhiro Kubo and Joyce Lee; Editing by Rod Nickel and William Mallard)
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